SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR.

''his next two novels are singletons, and represent his most accomplished work to date. RED DUST (1993) is set, like many 1990s novels, on a Mars which has been colonized (and terraformed) by humans. His treatment of this dominant theme -- in terms of a quest plot which takes its American protagonist across a complex landscape ruled by the Chinese -- is vivid, swift, and spontaneous-seeming. In the mid 1990s, the author is beginning to look like one of the significant exploratory talent of late sf'' (John Clute/Encyclopedia of SF).